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Friday, 13 July 2012

Wetter than An Otters Pocket

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update and I start by
congratulating a fellow anglers achievement in regular blog reader Baz
capturing his first ever double figure barbell from the river today, well done
mate I know you have been chasing it for some time now, congratulations and a
great looking fish.

This weekend all attention turns to Cudmore fisheries for
the final of Fishomania, you may remember last year I stayed local with my
fishing to get back in time to watch this event on sky Sports but with the
river season so far being such a washout and conditions being so much better
this weekend i am aching to get on the river so although my mind will be on
Fishomania on Saturday I will be on the banks of the River while it is on, my
hope is for the Hatman of Maggot Drowners Forum to bring it home for the forum
he is such an active member on.

Looking back on last week’s weather I cant remember the
last time it rained hard for a whole day solid but that is what happened last
Friday. I arrived at work soaking wet
after getting drenched on the way in, sat at my desk and for the whole day
worked with the relentless noise of rain hammering against my window as I have
said I cannot remember the last time it rained so hard for a whole day.

The River Dee didn’t really show any signs of rising till
around 1pm when a slight rise was registered on the EA website, still optimistic
both me and my uncle continued to plan our fishing trip to the river the
following day. The rain at the window
should have been enough for us to know better but with the last report of 6.5m
registered at 10pm we decided to make the journey through the following
morning.

Well what can I say the river levels raised overnight and
they raised fast, we arrived at a tributary we were hoping to fish to find the
river creeping up close to her rim, running chocolate brown and absolutely bombing
through. The river was not only
unfishable from a trotting point of view but with close to 15ft of sheer
banking covered in floodwater at our feet, fishing this venue in these
conditions was actually quite dangerous.
With a few hours to burn before the fishery we had chosen to fish opened
we chose to take a few videos and pictures from local venues and I have out
them all together in the short video below.

On to this weeks fishing

As mentioned above the river was totally unfishable and
with the rain still teeming down we made the decision to do some comfy fishing
on Flushing Meadows. The bait we had
prepared for the river session was a pint of castor, around a pint of hemp, a
pint and half of maggot and two old tins of corn that had accumulated in the
bottom of my box would we get through to any carp knowing the vast amounts of
silvers this venue held??

With time on our hands we had plenty of time to nip home
and change over our river gear for the more commercial friendly pole gear and
after a catch up with my dad, myself and my uncle set off on our short drive to
Flushing Meadows just in time to greet the farmer opening his gates.

With a pic of all the pools we decided to fish on the
Canal pool as although it holds a lot of silvers you can sometimes feed them
off and get the bait to the bottom for the carp to move in on. The weather had already broken and we were
greeted to the warm glow of the sun unmasked by any cloud as we set up our
gear. How different commercial fishing
is from the river you could literally fish out of your car window you are that
close to your pegs a far cry from the longs treks that are part and parcel of
our river campaign.

Not knowing that the glorious weather would last all day I
decided to stick to two defined swims, one was at the bottom of the shelf on my
top two and two and a swim literally at my feel on my top two power kit. I started by potting in quite a bit of corn
and hemp on my top four line and left the fish to settle on it while I began
building up my margin swim which I was planning to fish as my number one swim
with the much deeper and harder to fish top four swim as a back-up if they were
not having it close in.

The top two swim I fed heavily with castor and hemp
hoping to create a bed of bait to attract the carp in and also feed of the
smaller fish. The margin swim from the
off was full top to bottom with Rudd, roach and Ide all show below and were
literally coming one a chuck on the drop and when the bait managed to get
through to the bottom.

I could have stayed on this line and caught fish
literally all day but after a while it does get literally too easy so I decided
to move over to my top four kit to see if anything had moved in over my bed of
corn I had been introducing at regular intervals whilst fishing the margin
line.

When I purchased my pole over a year ago I decided to go
with blue hydro and white hyro in my match kits and black hydro in my power
kits. The white elastic is now in need
of a change I think and I am beginning to think more about the fishing I do and
what elastics I actually need with my fishing, a year ago I had no clue as I had
never owned a pole. I now have it sorted
in my head and I think I will be putting pink hydro in my match kit and taking
the white hydo out and outing a new white hydro on a pulla kit in one of my
power top and keeping one with black hydro in.
I really am not getting any use out of my power kits at the moment as both
my match kits cover all my fishing.

Back to the fishing and as soon as I dropped in over my
top four line I was getting the indication of fish in the swim and it wasn’t long
before the float began jolting around and ultimately going under, straight away
I knew this was bream and from the look of things a lot of them as bream after
bream like the one shown above graced the landing net. If you are local to Acton Bridge and want to
get your children into fishing there is no better place to learn the place it
rammed top to bottom with silvers.

The bream continued to come regularly and it wasn’t long
before all the commotion attracted the attention of a hungry carp, you fish
with the constant expectation that a carp will be your next fish but when that
float buries and the elastic starts zipping out of the end of your pole it
still takes you by surprise, why this is I don’t know but it is one of the
great feelings you get whilst taking part in the great sport we all love.

My uncle was fishing similar baits to me but started on
the float rod close in and was catching regular on maggot but like me soon
connected with some of the carp in the venue and actually landed the best fish
of the day shown below. The fish weighed
in at 5lb 12oz and put up one hell of a scrap on my uncles 13ft trotting rod
loaded with 3lb line.

I continued to catch steadily throughout the morning and
into the afternoon with countless bream and other silver fish coming to the net
with the odd small carp thrown in for good measure swapping between both lines
but what happened next really restored my faith in old style baits still having
a part to play in commercial fishing.

With around two hours to go and with around a quarter of
a pint or castor left and a full pint and half of maggot I began to introduce
the bait far heavier than I had done through the day, I disregarded my top four
line as I knew with small fish up in the water I had more chance of bait getting
to the bottom on my margin line so all attention went over to that.

I began picking up the obligatory rudd and ide but I continued
to feed heavily both by hand and with my kinder pot initially with castor and
hemp and all of a sudden the bites from small fish died away and I hit my first
carp and it just exploded from there with carp coming thick and fast for the
next hour and half, so much so I have put them together in a video below. I ran out of castor eventually and moved over
to maggot which saw the carp action intensify with me losing as many fish as I caught. It filled me with such joy to see a under
used bait like maggot do so well.

Looking ahead to this weekend it looks like the river
should be there or there about so I am looking forward to a day trotting the
river, comfortably and hopefully put together a nice net of dace. Fingers crossed for the rain relenting and us
finding the river in a decent state unlike last weekend.